


Keepsake

by scioscribe



Category: The Hateful Eight (2015)
Genre: Anal Fisting, Claiming Bites, Dom/sub, Handcuffs, Humiliating Dirty Talk, M/M, Post-Canon, Shame in Sexual Desires, scar kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 08:37:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18426954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: “You talk a long line of bullshit, major.  I don’t think I believe a fucking word you say.”“Then you won’t believe me when I tell you I don’t think there’s a single damn thing you wouldn’t do if I was the man telling you to do it.”Mannix had that slapped-around prettiness to him again, embarrassment flushing him up like whorehouse rouge.  “Bullshit,” he said, repeating himself, and stomped off to the other side of the house to bury himself in a blanket and look put upon.





	Keepsake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PositivelyVexed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PositivelyVexed/gifts).



Warren had made the mistake of letting Mannix winter over, letting the nights of Mannix snoring like a crosscut saw on the other side of the bed pile up and pile up like the snowdrift against the side of the house.

He might still have been recuperating, too busted up to get back to work, but there was no way Mannix couldn’t sit a horse by now, so Warren didn’t know why he hadn’t kicked him out on the first day of clear weather.

“I do,” Mannix said.  He had a kind of persistent cheerfulness; two months into cabin fever, it made Warren want to shoot him even more than usual.  “You’ve got a sentimental streak, major.”

“Can't say I've ever been accused of that before.”

Mannix was sitting at the kitchen table.  He’d been packing Warren’s pipe for him, which was the kind of thing he would get it in his head to do sometimes without even being asked—white boy had a real habit of dropping favors in Warren’s lap and then standing there waiting for thanks, like he mistook himself for a dog that had brought in a dead bird.  But now, convinced he was being clever, Mannix put the pipe aside and stacked his feet up on the table and started making a speech.  And there was nothing even halfway endearing about that.

“You held onto that uniform, didn’t you?  You went through hell and you kept a shine on every button of the coat you wore there.  I’d be surprised if you don’t have a splinter of Wellenbeck you kept in your pocket all this time.  So we went through hell together at Minnie’s—”

“And I kept you?”  He reached out and took the pipe and lit it.  Damn if Mannix didn’t look cheated somehow, almost blue-balled, by having it grabbed up before he could present it right.  “You a souvenir, Chris Mannix?”

They walked a razor's edge with each other.  Warren could be amused by him sometimes, but the anger was never too far off.  He liked it.  It lent a kind of liveliness to his convalescing, waking up every morning not knowing if that was the day he'd kill him or not.  Deciding fresh each time.  Mannix must have sniffed out this was one of those key decision moments, because he got his feet off the table right quick, boots hitting the floor with a thump.

“Ah.  No, sir?”

“But an old brother in arms, you’re thinking,” Warren said in a friendly way.

Mannix touched the tip of his tongue to his lips.  “No, sir.  Not that either.”

“'Not that' because you can tell it’s the wrong answer.”

“Major, you never met a spark you didn’t want to fan into a fucking bonfire.  If you’re getting yourself in a temper because of what I said, why not just forget—”

Warren said, “I keep the uniform around because it’s useful, hillbilly, same as the Lincoln letter.  I’ll give you it comes with some fond fucking memories, but that’s what they are, fond.  I wear that coat, I think about killing a lot of men who looked just like you, and shit, it keeps me warm enough for any cold night you want.  Useful.  Fond.  Neither word features much in my thoughts on you.”

Mannix just looked at him, eyes hard and hopeful.  He had a soft mouth and a killer's hands.  He could go one way or the other off that razor's edge, too, but he had to be pushed to it.  Not an independent thinker, particularly.

Warren hammered the point home.  “You ain’t a keepsake, Mannix.”

“All right,” Mannix said in a low voice.  “What do you keep me around for, then?”

Without meaning it, he’d beat the point into himself, too; he could feel the sharp spike of it all the way through where he maybe would have kept a conscience.  He had a lot of good reasons to kill Chris Mannix right there at his table.  He thought about it, too—unholstered his pistol and ran his thumb over the hammer.  Brushed steel as smooth as silk.

Mannix rested his fingers lightly against his hip, just above his holster.  They were the kind of men who wore their guns even on quiet snowbound evenings, like they’d be naked without them, thrown off-balance at the hip.  Lives they’d led, somebody could bust the door down and come in shooting at any hour on the clock; it behooved them to be ready for it.  And then there was always this—had always been the chance they’d come down to this.  A little standoff over supper.

Only Mannix wasn’t quite drawing on him.  He'd gone only so far before he'd stopped, and he'd wanted Warren to see that, both the going and the stopping.  And as Warren watched him, Mannix brought his hands up completely,

“If you’re gonna kill me, black major, _which_ I doubt, I’d just as soon get comfortable first.”  He put his feet up on the table again and leaned back, propping the chair up on its two back legs.  “You let me know when you make up your mind.”

“That how you want to die?” Warren said.  “That fucking cocky?”

“Maybe I’ll die pointing out that _you_ ain’t answered my goddamn question.”

“What, am I going to kill you?  Like you said, I’m still making my mind up on the subject.”

“No.  What you keep me around for.”  He rocked himself further back, losing more and more balance, making his position more and more tenuous.

And while it was inspirational that the dumbass had gone and discovered metaphor, Warren thought it best to draw a line then and there establishing what kind of bullshit preening and provocation he’d tolerate.  If Chris wanted to strut around about outsmarting Daisy Domergue, well, that was fine with him.  He’d even give credit where credit was due in saying Chris was the first man to sniff out the Lincoln letter—all right, fair enough.  But if Chris Mannix thought he was going to sit there on one of Warren’s chairs and rock himself back and forth and get a damn thing out of him that Warren didn’t want to give, it was time he found out he was sorely mistaken.

He didn’t give two sweet shits if Mannix put himself off-kilter—the idiot was probably born that way.  But when it came to this—and against all odds, it had come to this before it'd come to killing—he wanted it clear that the appeal of it for him wasn’t Mannix himself.  You didn’t buy a pistol for its shine but for it how it fired, how it felt in your hand.  It was all in how you used the thing.

So he put a boot out and kicked Mannix’s chair the rest of the way back.  Sent the asshole spilling out onto the floor.

“Well, slap my ass and call me Sally, major, you didn’t have to do that.”

“I don’t know about that.  Felt right enough.  Natural.”

“If we’re gonna talk about what nature says about me and you—”

Warren pulled the hammer back.  “You want to go down that road?”

“You don’t even know what I was gonna say!”

“Yeah, I do.  You’re well-past surprising me and I’ve heard every lecture on nature from crackers like you that I can stand.  I’m full up on it.  You want to talk nature, Mannix, let’s talk about yours.  And what it means that I kicked you down to that floor and you’re still there sitting pretty.  Liking where you’ve been put.  Might be some folks who would call that mighty _un_ natural.”

Mannix shot up to his feet and Warren had himself a good laugh at that, at the boy thinking it would make a lick of difference now.

Warren said, “You still want the answer to that question of yours now?”

He saw Mannix’s eyes linger on his smile.  Like he’d learn anything from it.  He had a sixth sense for lies, but he didn't know shit about truth.  If he thought you believed it yourself, and he liked you, he'd swallow down whatever you said, whatever you did, just on your say-so, like medicine from a doctor.  But he couldn't outwit you to get to what you didn't know yourself.  It left him confused, and when Mannix got confused, he got mean and unhappy.

So this was the part where he guessed Mannix would take himself off in a huff, and good riddance to him.  More or less.

If he had to admit it to himself, when he had trouble sleeping, that wound from Minnie’s paining him down his middle like he was roasting on a spit, having Mannix there wasn't all bad.  He’d never been laid up this long before, let alone in a winter like this one; hell, his own house was half a stranger to him.  Mannix should have been stranger still, but he wasn't.

But all the same, Warren wouldn’t be sad to see him go.  Mannix was half-right: they were an unnatural thing.

And he still hadn’t said yes or no.

“Before I die of old age,” Warren said to nudge him along.

Mannix raised his eyebrows.  “So any minute now?"

He was looking around everywhere, like he expected the prophets themselves to come down and tell him what to do, and when it failed to happen, well, he conceived of himself as a poor soul set adrift.  Or he did for a few seconds, anyhow.  Then he seemed to give into it—threw his shoulders back and stood up straight.

And he didn’t walk any fucking place at all.

“Yeah,” Mannix said.  “I do still want that answer, major.”

A warm, ill-advised feeling at that.  Warren shrugged and unbuttoned his fly.  Took his sweet time doing it, too, enjoying the way Mannix stood stock still and stared: it almost looked like the son of a bitch was about to snap to attention.

“I don’t know, Chris.  You’ve about talked me out of it.  I should boot your ass out into the snow.”

Mannix appeared to think that looking straight at Warren's cock would blind him.  Like of everything he'd done, this would be the thing to earn him God's judgment.  When he spoke, his voice was thick.  “Maybe I could change your mind.”

“Could be.  I don’t hold out much hope.”

“I can be useful,” Mannix said.  He still sounded like somebody had clubbed him upside the head, left whatever brains he had dazed beyond recognition, but sheer hopefulness was winning out.  He’d be an inspiration to every Southern boy who ever doubted he could put hearth and home aside to suck cock like he’d been handcrafted for the purpose.  He put the matter to rest by getting down on his knees.

He said, “This how you like me?  Where you put me?  Stuck looking up at you?”  Poison crept in: “This useful enough for you, you black bastard?”

Warren put his thumb on Mannix’s Adam’s apple and felt him swallow.  “Maybe.  That how you rose up to captain, Chris?  Being useful?”

Red stood out in his face so fast it was like Warren had slapped him.  “You know it ain’t.  I’m a good fucking shot, major, and—”

“Not exactly a natural leader of men, though, are you?  Being down on your knees and all.”

“Well, ain’t you the king of fucking indecision.  You want me up off ’em now?”

He kind of liked the little flash of challenge there; he liked knowing he could overrule it and make Mannix stay down there as long as he chose.  He smiled and Mannix went redder than ever, knowing it too but being far less pleased by it.

“I suppose I could give you a chance to earn your bed and board some,” Warren said.  “Then again, maybe Erskine Mannix's son wouldn't be interested in anything low like this.”

He made a move like he was going to put himself away and all of a sudden Mannix was there, his hands splayed across Warren's thighs.  He hadn’t begged for his life but he seemed about ready to beg for cock, so Warren decided to let him get on with it.

It was a bad idea, maybe the worst he’d had since hitching that ride with John Ruth, maybe even the worst since he’d gone back to the Union camp after Wellenbeck and let the motherfuckers drum him out.  After the midwinter chill of the cabin, Mannix’s mouth was as hot as a just fired bullet, and he gave it over to Warren without any kind of hesitation or squeamishness.  Might have lacked for practice, but not for enthusiasm.  The boy did tend to commit to things.

He thought about Mannix walking around his house all those weeks, Mannix sleeping in his bed with him.  Like he'd thought that if he just dug in his heels in a spot where everything was Warren's, he'd slip one day into being Warren's too.  He'd been wanting this.

“You knew what you were after, didn’t you?” Warren said, tugging his hair until Mannix looked up at him, his lips all swollen and slick with spit.  “How long did you go around waiting for me, Chris?”

Each second Mannix delayed answering him, Warren thought, meant further and further back.  He ran one fingertip all along Mannix’s mouth, tracing those roughed-up lips, and Mannix leaned into his hand, which made Warren think he’d best take it away.

It left Mannix blinking up at him: thrown off, unsure.

“Since when?” Warren said.

Mannix turned his head down.  “Since you put your gun in my face,” he said to the floor.  “Or since you gave it to me.  Since you did the one and then the other.”  He shifted his weight.  He was still hard, but being questioned was getting him restless.  A man interrupted in the middle of a dream.  “Major, I don’t know.”

He half-rose.  Warren should have let him go, but he didn’t: he just grabbed another thick handful of Mannix’s hair and shoved him down again.  All should-haves aside, the way Mannix moaned when Warren put him back in his place could've gotten him off then and there.  He almost regretted waiting until Mannix got his mouth back on him: it would have been something to know whether or not Mannix would've gotten that cheated look, missing out on a mouthful of come.

Afterwards, for lack of anything better to do, he jerked Mannix off.  He’d allow that the noises Chris made during it all weren’t without their charms.

“So that’s it, then,” Mannix said, once he’d gotten himself cleaned up, as spiffy as if nothing had ever happened.  “I’m useful.”  He spat the word out.  “Well, that’s all you’re getting, dammit.  It’s nothing but the fucking weather bedeviling us, you know, making us stir-crazy?  I'd never do that otherwise.”  His face begged Warren to believe him.

“Well, I’ll tell you, Chris, you deserve some real fancy medal pinned on you, then, because I’ve gotten more than a few brotherhood-of-man fumbles in my life, from men in the middle of their own dry spells, but I’ll be damned if even a one of them sucked cock half as well as you.  Matter of fact, they didn’t usually suck it all.  But you, white boy, you went and outdid yourself.”

He wondered how ashamed Mannix was of the little flicker of pride that went over his face at that, assuming Mannix knew himself well enough to feel it at all, which wasn’t all that fucking likely.

“You talk a long line of bullshit, major.  I don’t think I believe a fucking word you say.”

“Then you won’t believe me when I tell you I don’t think there’s a single damn thing you wouldn’t do if I was the man telling you to do it.”

Mannix had that slapped-around prettiness to him again, embarrassment flushing him up like whorehouse rouge.  “Bullshit,” he said, repeating himself, and stomped off to the other side of the house to bury himself in a blanket and look put upon.

The stupidity of all this aside, Warren decided it felt good to know how he was going to spend the rest of the winter.  He liked having something to do, and proving Mannix wrong would suffice until better work came along.

Of course, as it turned out, he had to revise his plans a little.  He’d given Mannix pride too much credit—and wasn't that a shameful, shameful thing—he'd made allowances for Mannix holding back a little more.  But it turned out that first fuck had set a pattern for them, because instead of refusing even once, Mannix would do as he was told because in the moment he knew damn well what the natural order between them really was.  Then he'd get off, or sometimes he'd even just get Warren off, and only  _then_ would he come over glum and mope around.  As far as Warren was concerned, it was the best of both worlds, because when Mannix was moping, he actually shut up for a while.

“What are you thinking?” Warren said to him once.  “Mulling on your daddy?”

Mannix laid out against his table, his pale ass marked up red with welts from having Warren’s belt plied across it—it was a pretty sight and Warren felt unmistakably, dangerously fond of Mannix for providing him with it.  Unluckily for Mannix, feeling fond didn’t make Warren feel sweet.  There wasn’t anything in the world that could pull off that particular trick.

“It must eat at you,” Warren continued, “thinking about him looking down at you from up there in the clouds.  Watching all this.  Disapproving.  I can see how it would.  Erskine Mannix, commander of—what was it, Chris?  Four hundred men?  Last hope of the lost cause.  And here’s his baby boy, bending over to get—well, you know what you got.  From me.  And don’t tell me you’d have liked it just as well from somebody else, because I won’t believe you.”

Mannix pressed his forehead hard against the table.  “Fuck, major.”

“I’m just saying I could see how you could be thinking all that.”

“Well, I ain’t.  Not without you putting it in my head.”

“Me, I like to see it another way.  I don’t picture your daddy in heaven at all.  I ply this across your ass, Chris,” and he added an extra hard snap, sending Mannix’s hips bucking forward against the table, “and I think about him down beneath our feet.  Way down in hell, looking up at us.”

“Like Jody Domingre in the cellar,” Mannix said, half-breathless.  “Ready to blow your _black balls off,_ major.”

“That come to mind because your daddy couldn’t shoot for shit neither?  Anyway, I figure this is worse for him than any kind of fire and brimstone ever would be.”  He reached around Mannix’s narrow hips and got hold of his cock and stroked it for him.  “What do you think about that?”

“I think…”  Mannix made an awful keening sound in his throat, thrusting further into Warren’s hand.  “I think dead’s dead.  And you and me, we’ve both seen enough dead men to know it.  And I think if ever there’s a bastard who didn’t think there was anybody above him in the world, anybody who could tell him what to do, it’s you, major, so don’t go trying to tell me you got religion.”

“I do get a kick out of you sometimes, Chris,” Warren said.  He pressed the palm of his other hand hard and steady against some of the welts on Mannix’s ass and listened to the sound Mannix made when he did it.  He was the noisiest damn lay Warren had ever had in his life.

He was loudest of all when Warren was fucking him, which he started doing as a regular thing.  Mostly over the table, but sometimes in their bed, where he always seemed to fuck Mannix even harder than usual, like he was bound and determined to make him bandy-legged.

It was in their bed, too, that he wound up leaving a new scar on Mannix, or at any rate messing up an old one.  He’d bent down near Mannix’s thigh and Mannix had gabbled to himself like he was about to be the luckiest son of a bitch ever lived, getting sucked off by Major Marquis Warren, only instead of blowing him Warren had bit at that bullet wound of his.  Oswaldo had left it on him—star-shaped thing, ugly and pink.  Warren changed the shape of it for good.  And never mind his dick getting sucked or even touched at all, Chris came harder from that than he ever had before, desperate and cussing, his blood running down the inside of his thigh.

They poured whiskey on the spot afterwards to clean it out.  It healed clean.  No mistaking it for anything but what it was, though, and Warren liked it that way.

By then, spring was right on top of them.

Winter had never stopped him from working before, but this year he’d let it.  He’d figured the trouble at Christmas could last him a long time—shit, it could last at least as long as the Domingre Gang money did.  And he was still healing up, after all.  But that was getting harder to claim, because being on the mend hadn’t stopped him from all manner of unseemly acts, a lot of them a hell of a lot more demanding of a man than riding a horse and pulling a trigger.  He was better and the weather was turning fine—or what passed for fine in March in Wyoming.

“The way I see it,” Mannix said to him one morning over breakfast, “is I got two choices.”

He waited, like Warren was meant to ask him what those two choices were.  Warren took another bite of toast and went on enjoying his coffee.

Mannix scowled at him.  “Like I _said_ , two choices.  One is you and me partner up.”

“Which I ain’t invited you to do.”

“And that’s a lapse of judgment on your part, major.  So I’m still counting it in.  Choice two is I ride into Red Rock after all, spin them _some_ story of why I’m three fucking months late, and hope they still got a vacancy.”

Warren put his cup down.  He hadn’t even mentioned Red Rock in all this time—of all the shit he liked to hold over Chris, having lied about getting elected sheriff was so far down on the list it didn’t even feature.  Lying was nothing.

“You’re telling me,” he said, “that all this time you’ve been the sheriff of Red Rock—”

“Telling you?  Major, I _told_ you.  Six or seven times, all the way back at Minnie’s.”

“—and you didn’t even hang around town any after we cashed in the bounties?  Didn’t even tell them your name?  And then you left, is what you’re telling me, and spent three months up on this mountain, in my fucking house, for no damn reason?”

Mannix looked sure of his own innocence, a look that had never suited him a bit.  “You’re making a fuss over nothing, major.”

“Why didn’t you just stay in Red Rock?”

“Well,” Mannix said, “because we were coming here.”

Warren hadn't ever asked for Mannix's company, let alone his undying fucking loyalty.  He'd been pushing Mannix all winter, proving Mannix wouldn't say no to him, and it pissed him off to learn that Mannix had had every reason all that time to know he was right.  He knew he'd shacked up with Warren on purpose and he'd _still_ gone around sulking and pretending to himself he'd light out for a whorehouse just as soon as the weather broke.

“ _I_ was coming here, yeah,” he said.  “ _You_ just went and attached yourself.  Like a goddamn burr on a horse.”

“You weren’t even in any kind of shape to keep this place up, not when we first got here—and you said I could stay!”

“And you said it was bullshit, me saying you didn’t have any ironclad rules about what orders you’d take.”

“Yeah, because it damn well is.  I’m my own fucking man, major—”

If he'd been his own man, he'd have stayed in Red Rock and let them pin the star on him, not followed along to pack Warren's pipe for him and nurse his own fucking illusions.  No, he wasn't a keepsake, but he was surely kept.  And since teaching him that step by step didn't seem to be working, Warren would just cheat and go straight to the finish line.

He played nice for the rest of the day.  Let Chris back him down from their fight—like a little honeyed wheedling had ever done a damn thing to change his mood—and said he’d think about a partnership.  The good folks of Red Rock had probably already planted a tombstone for Mannix anyhow, given him a symbolic plot right next to Chester Charles Smithers’s.  That would have suited him once.

That night, Warren spread him out in their bed and pushed two fingers inside him.  He watched Mannix take that from him, his legs wide, his hips canted for the best angle.

“I’d say you’re downright greedy for cock,” Warren said.  “The way you like getting something in you.”

“You don’t stop, major, and I might even say you’re right.”

No, by the end of this, Mannix would be saying he was right without bargaining with him about it.  He left him alone on the bed a minute, just to show it was nothing to him to leave Mannix with his ass up in the air, and he came back with a pair of handcuffs.

“What do you even keep those around for?” Mannix said truculently.  “You don’t ever use them.”

“I’m about to, ain’t I?”  He dangled them in front of Mannix’s nose.  “Now, last time you came face to face with a pair of these, I seem to recall you throwing them back in John Ruth’s face.  Never mind you freezing to death, no, you were the sheriff of Red Rock and a white man, and you weren’t gonna be put in no chains.  I have that about right?”

He yanked Mannix's head back by his hair and shoved it down again, making him nod.

“Yeah, thought I did.  But see, you ain’t the sheriff of Red Rock no more.  You gave that up to come here with me.  And I ain’t John Ruth.  So you’re gonna put these on, putting the chain through the bedstead there.  I’m gonna play with you a little tonight, and I don’t want you fucking it up.”

He might have told Mannix the plan if Mannix had asked, but he liked that Mannix didn't.  Liked it almost as well as the clink of steel on steel and the snick of the cuffs closing on Mannix’s wrists.

He put his thumb in the crease of Mannix’s ass and drew it down.  Mannix didn't need to be told to spread his knees out a little more to make room for him.

“Good boy, Chris.  Then again, you always are.”

He circled one greased-up finger around Mannix’s asshole, feeling Mannix twitch underneath him.  And maybe somewhere along the line he’d gone from liking just that Mannix was a white son-of-a-bitch he could fuck up any way he chose to liking a couple of particular things about him in the bargain.  He supposed he had to concede he knew Chris’s body awfully well by now.  Chris himself too, maybe, just because it was unavoidable.

“You remember when I told you I reckoned you’d do whatever I said?”

“I don’t remember you being this fond of reminiscing over getting your cock in me,” Chris said.  His voice was strained.  “Go on and get on with it.”

Warren slapped his ass a little.  “I’m going at my own pace, boy.  I asked if you remembered.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“You still feel now like you did then?”

Chris hesitated and then nodded.  It was a funny sight to see from just the back, his head bowed in already by the way his shoulders were up and in because of the cuffs.  “Since I said it again just this afternoon, major, yeah.  I got my pride, whatever you think.”

“Good thing I got you in those chains, then,” Warren said.  He pressed a finger inside Chris, listening for that little swallowed gasp Chris always gave him.  He wasn’t disappointed.  “Because what I’m gonna to do to you, Chris Mannix, no man with a spot of pride left in him would allow.”

Chris tried to brazen his way through it.  “Oh, I’m sure you’re just full of ideas, Major Marquis.  What, you’re gonna actually bother getting me opened up before you fuck me?”  He sounded like he found the prospect disappointing.

Warren went on stretching him, toying with him.  He had three fingers in him now, and he’d never given him even that much before.  All this fooling around had never been his idea of a good fuck, and he’d never seen the point of spoiling Chris with a lot of slicking up and stretching out.  But he was starting to see what about it could appeal, namely that it seemed to be aggravating Chris to death and because Chris like this was a sight to behold, his cock up and ruddy and leaking onto the bed, his body shaking around Warren’s fingers, little begging sounds escaping his throat.

“You’ve gotten yourself mixed up somehow, Chris,” Warren said kindly.  “I ain’t putting in this kind of work just so I can fuck you.  I don't need to go through all that, not when you're nothing like cherry.  You already know how to take my cock without any trouble.”

He added his little finger, angling it so he was holding Mannix open; he heard him breathe in, felt him try to tell what was happening.  He could almost hear the dumbass counting in his head, sure he’d gotten turned around somewhere.  And he had, of course, but it was too late to correct it now, too late for them both.

“Time we’re done here, I’m going to have my whole hand inside you, white boy.  I’m gonna fuck you _that_ way this time, my black hand up your white ass.  Now you see what I mean about pride, don’t you?”  He rubbed his thumb against the rim of Mannix’s hole.  “Somebody with pride, he just couldn’t allow this.”

Chris pressed his face down further into the pillow.

“Oh, damn it all,” he said.  His voice was soft.  It sounded like Warren had snapped something in him for good.  “Dammit, dammit, _fuck_.  You black bastard—”

Warren teased him with his thumb again, pressing a little more this time, bunching his fingers close, and Chris almost howled.

“There you go,” Warren said.  “You like that?”

He rubbed Chris that way—did it a nice long time before he finally pushed his thumb in.  Chris made some noise, wet and hurt and needy, and Warren found the right spot inside him and stroked him there until Chris bucked forward.  He hadn’t come yet, but he was close, and some of the tightness around Warren’s fingers eased up a little.  He spread them out, listening to Chris whimper, and then he pressed still further in.

“You look damn near obscene like this, Chris.  Like you couldn’t ever get enough.  Maybe I’ve already proved my point, so how about I just pull out of you and let you spend some time trying to get back to where you pretend to have a scrap of fucking dignity.  You can even get off right here and now.  I’ll just stop all this—”

“No,” Chris said.  He sounded half-strangled.  “No, don’t stop—you got to finish it or I’m gonna lose my fucking mind—”

“Now that’s a real admission.  I say I’ll pull my hand out of your ass and finish jerking you off and you say no, go on and give you the rest, get in you up to my wrist?”

It was like Chris was half-doped up with laudanum.  Warren yanked at his hair again, harder than ever, pulling it until Chris half-lifted his head and turned to look over his shoulder, blinking owlishly and then groaning at what he’d found.  Like it looked even worse than he’d thought it would.

“I can do anything I want to you,” Warren said.  His voice was calm.  “You want me to.”

Chris looked at him.  Not even at his hand, just at him in general, and then said, “Yeah, major.  I do.  You can.”

“That’s good, Chris.  You could make a halfway decent partner after all.”

Little by little, he stretched Chris out, pushing in and in until the widest part of his hand was in him—he brought Chris off then and there, as a kind of reward for taking so much so well, because hell, he figured Mannix almost deserved it—and then pushing until he was, as he’d said, in him up to the wrist.  He let him get used to the fullness of it, just for a minute, and then fucked him like that, coming against his own hand as he moved it in and out of Chris.  He couldn’t resist the picture it made.  Mannix would take any damn thing Warren chose to give him, and there’d be no denying that after this.

And there wasn’t.  In the morning, they lay in bed a while, bare-assed, still spent.  Mannix kept running his fingers over the old wound on his leg, over and over, like he was doing that in lieu of playing with himself.  He traced each individual point of the bite-mark Warren had left on him.

“We really partnered up, major?"

“I can’t seem to get rid of you,” Warren said.  “So it’s either put you to work or kill you.  And I’ll probably come around to the killing someday, but I may as well get some use out of you in the meantime.”

Use and fondness.  He watched Chris go on caressing that keepsake scar.  He thought about pride.

“You ever let anyone else do this kind of shit to you?” Warren said, sounding only idly curious.

“Fuck no.”

Warren rolled over and put his hand on the scar.  Mannix didn’t stop fidgeting with it, not really: he just went on running his fingertip over Warren’s knuckles, following the outline of him.


End file.
